


Casa Verde

by icarus_chained



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Noir, Espionage, Gen, M/M, Violence, War, casablanca - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-05-27
Updated: 2012-06-08
Packaged: 2017-11-06 03:19:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/414142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarus_chained/pseuds/icarus_chained
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The place was Cafe Bercilak. The place you went to drown your sorrows, forget your sins, gamble your life away. Tony hadn't been much for the last of those. The first two, though ...</p>
<p>And then, the shadow of war finally swept over Morocco, and brought past sins along with it.</p>
<p>An Avengers/Casablanca fusion, essentially. Tony-centric. Will possibly head in a Tony/Loki direction, later.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Cafe Bercilak

**Author's Note:**

> I'd just like to apologise in advance for the many historical inaccuracies I'm undoubtedly committing, here. *smiles sheepishly* And it's not a _precise_ Casablanca fusion, either (the chances of Renault's character being successfully Norwegian were fairly slim, for example, so we fudged things a little).
> 
> Thor and Loki are Norwegian as opposed to other Scandinavians because it fit the story somewhat alarmingly well (is there a better word for Loki than quisling? Really?).

The nightclub’s name was technically the _Cafe Bercilak_ , for no real reason Tony understood, and strongly suspected was a little in-joke of Bruce’s, but around here, everyone called it Banner’s place. Neutral territory, as much as anywhere was, these days. The place you went to drown your sorrows, and forget your sins, and gamble your life away.

The last of those, he could take or leave, but the first two … They’d been the reasons he’d first come here, years ago now. When the scars on his wrists and chest had been new, and the scars in his heart newer still, and the knowledge that he could never go home a stone around his neck. He’d come here looking for escape in the bottom of a bottle, and here, after a long, long week swimming the amber sea, he’d met Bruce. A man of savage sarcasm, and gentle smiles, and a darkness in the corners of his eyes that Tony could taste near as strongly as the whiskey on his tongue. 

To this day, he didn’t know what it was Bruce had done, or seen, what was lurking behind the rare flashes of rage that burst through the man like a summer storm, and he’d never asked. Same as Bruce never asked about the marks on his wrists, the star-burst scar on his chest. Though he’d slowly gone from the place’s worst customer to its best barman, though they’d gone from something like penitent and confessor, to employer and employee, to something close to friends, there were still some things they didn’t need to know about each other.

Or hadn’t, at least. Until the shadow of war stopped being content with foreign shores, and swept its inexorable way over them. And with it, in its wake … shadows of the past. Old sins, come back to light.

Turned out, all the whiskey in the world couldn’t drown some sorrows, or take some sins away.

He looked up as the door opened, and felt that same shadow sweep silently over him at the sight of the two men in the doorway. The very pictures of Aryan perfection, both of them, blond and blue-eyed and powerful. The very image of a megalomaniac’s dream. Which was more than a little ironic, considering.

The taller of the two didn’t look to him, except as an avenue to Bruce, and their prior arrangement. The shorter, though …

“Stark,” Captain Rogers said, quietly. No overt disdain. The Captain was too good for that. But the ice that was always in his eyes when he looked at Tony didn’t fade. It never did.

“Captain,” Tony nodded back, smiling dark and easy over the quiver in his stomach. “Oh. Sorry. Just Steven, wasn’t it?”

The man’s jaw tightened. “In public, yes,” he said, short and clipped. “I’m not a Captain any longer.” Not here, anyway. Not where the wrong ears could hear about it.

Tony made his smile shift towards apologetic. It wasn’t as much effort as he would have liked it to be. Damn the man. “You and the Nordic wet-dream, you looking for Bruce?”

Odinsson’s forehead wrinkled a little, a small frown. Steve just winced, cold-eyed and disappointed. “We did arrange for a private room, tonight.”

Tony very deliberately didn’t let his smile drop, though his stomach had made sure not to allow him the same luxury. “How about I go find him, then?” he said, light and casual, making sure his teeth didn’t clench. The _last_ thing he needed right now was the knowledge that Captain bloody Rogers was going to be sticking around, possibly all night. And if they wanted a private room … then the rest of their little movement would probably be drifting in soon, as well. With patrols up all over the area, and a new German Commandant due into town.

Fuck. Nothing like a healthy stew of guilt and danger to make your evening. 

He went to find Bruce.

“Hey, boss?” Tony poked his head around the office door. Bruce was doing the accounts. Well, one set of them, at least. The backroom accounts were done in Bruce’s rooms, not the office. “When did you decide to start tempting fate, and forget to tell me?”

Bruce blinked owlishly at him. “What?”

Tony tipped his head back towards the bar. “The Captain and his Norwegian date?”

Realisation flashed across Bruce’s face, followed by a shot of alarm, and then a slow slide of calculation. “That wasn’t until next week,” he said, scraping the chair back and standing. “The new Commandant is arriving at the airfield tonight. We weren’t planning to risk anything, until we knew which way to jump.”

Tony grinned darkly. “Hence the tempting fate,” he said. “But the good Captain seems to be under the impression you agreed to tonight.”

Bruce frowned. The dark, thunderous version. The one that meant his temper was creeping surfacewards. Fear and worry tended to do that to him, Tony’d noticed. “We’ll see about that,” he said, shortly, and moved past Tony onto the stairs, and down towards the bar.

Tony, something in his chest fluttering between guilt and relief, followed him down.

“Steven,” Bruce said, amiably, coming up to the bar. The pair turned to greet him, Odinsson with a great clap on the back, Rogers with a firm handshake. They both ignored Tony as he sidled behind Bruce, back behind the bar. “What’s this about you wanting the upstairs tonight? You’re not on the ledger until next Thursday.”

The Captain … actually looked a little sheepish. “Something’s come up, Bruce. We need the room tonight, if you can.”

Tony felt his eyebrows shoot up. “That wasn’t what you told me,” he drawled, a little dangerously. “You said you had it arranged for tonight.”

Rogers looked sharply at him. “I wanted to make my case to Bruce,” he said, crisply. “I thought you’d turn us away cold.”

Tony … let his mouth curl into a sneer. Well. The man wasn’t wrong.

“He would have,” Bruce said, lightly, leaning on the bar. And, too, leaning slightly between them and Tony. Huh. Tony wondered if he noticed. “He would probably have been _right_ to. Your timing, gentlemen, is more than a little suspect.”

“You know who’s coming tonight,” Odinsson spoke up. Finally. His voice was quiet and grave, which was a change from his usual. Get a few drinks in him, and Thor could knock a house down, and a drinking song his weapon of choice. “We need to meet.”

Bruce frowned impassively back at him. “We know full well,” he said, softly. “Which is why we _can’t_. He’s not guaranteed to come here, but _Cafe Bercilak_ is the first port of call for too many. There’s too much risk.” He shrugged, lightly. “And besides. The upstairs is already booked. Signor Guardi is conducting business tonight.”

“Smugglers?” the Captain asked sharply. “You’d support criminals sooner than you’d support freedom?”

Tony saw the flash, then. The real, genuine rage in Bruce’s eyes, shuttered down rapidly before it could flare out. Bruce locked it down quick. But Tony saw it. 

So did the Captain.

“We support no-one,” Bruce said, heavy and quiet. “And provide a rest for everyone. That, too, is a kind of freedom, isn’t it, Captain?”

There were times when Tony _wondered_ , when he really wondered, what the hell it was Bruce had seen. What the hell it was Bruce had lived through. The man had been everywhere, had travelled clear across the globe. India. South America. Before fetching up here, in this nowhere on the curve of North Africa. The man had been everywhere. And it seemed sometimes that he had no patience left, for any cause at all, nor any man who professed one.

Not that Tony blamed him there.

Rogers was silent for a long second. Seeing something in Bruce’s eyes that he didn’t want to argue with, maybe. Or, less cynically, maybe just … not wanting to push, at so obvious a wound.

“I know the Commandant,” he said, at last. Quietly, seriously. “I know who he is, and I know why he’s here.” His face twisted, for a second, honest pain. “Bruce … I need to warn people. I need to let them know, before it’s too late. Please. We’ll only need an hour.”

Bruce … paused, at that. He paused, and looked to Tony. Silent question, because that was the deal they’d made, all those years ago. To take risks jointly, or not at all. Bruce looked at Tony.

And Tony … would have _liked_ to say no. Would have liked to shake his head, and turf them out onto the street, and pretend the war hadn’t come crawling up to his doorstep, and dragged the past along with it. He would have liked to. But …

“Give them the kitchen,” he said, tiredly. “We can’t kick Guardi out, someone will talk, end up asking why. The office is too close along the stairs, too. But they’ll fit in the kitchen, and no-one’s likely to run across them there.”

And there was a flicker, on Bruce’s face, like a small smile, and an honest grin, on Odinsson’s, but it was the Captain Tony ended up looking at. It was Steve, and the fading of the ice in those blue eyes, for the first time since he’d come to Casablanca, and realised Tony wasn’t as dead as Obie had apparently led the home country to believe. For the first time since Steve had realised that his friend’s son was too much of a coward to go home, and let the people who’d mourned him know he was alive. 

Tony could have told him the truth, of course. Could have explained to him why he _couldn’t_ go back, not so long as Obie was alive, could have explained that there was a _reason_ Obie was telling people he was dead, but … Well. He was too much of a coward for that, too.

And now, looking at him, with nothing better than the offer of a kitchen for an hour … now, the man looked at him, and it was almost, _almost_ , warm.

Fuck. When this night was over? Tony was finding a bottle to crawl into. And it wouldn’t work, it never worked, but sometimes all you had was those few amber hours, where you thought it _might_. Sometimes, that was all you had.

Damn shame it wasn’t ever good enough. Some sins, you just can’t forget.

***

Bruce left Tony on the main bar, and the front of the house, choosing to take care of both their backroom parties himself. Because Bruce was a _compassionate man_ , and the best damn friend a man could ask for, let it never be said otherwise. It wasn’t a complete pass, because he’d still have to steer incomers of both groups right as they came in, which in the case of Steve’s group meant having to _look_ at them, but still. He wouldn’t have to spend the whole evening in contact with them, and that was enough to have him blessing Bruce’s name all over again.

That was, until _he_ came in. Dark-haired, green-eyed, with the slyest tongue Tony’d ever seen. Quick and clever, dapper in his light business suit, pretending he had no ulterior motives at all. The reason Thor stayed in hiding as much as possible, only letting loose in places it was marked safe. The reason so many people walked warily, for the past few months.

The quisling. Thor’s brother. Loki Laufeysson. Who, if he wasn’t actually a Gestapo, was at least well acquainted with their company. The most dangerous man who could _possibly_ have shown up, barring the actual Commandant himself. And even then.

And Tony’d thought this night couldn’t get any better. 

Thankfully, all of Steve’s party had already gone through by the time he showed up. Not that there were many of them. The Russian, Natasha, who frankly scared Tony. She’d raised an eyebrow at the redirection, a cold, questioning glare that left him feeling like he’d murdered her best friend, or something (he hadn’t, to his knowledge, at least not directly. That … wasn’t as much of a guarantee as he would have believed, before Abyssinia). And then the marksman, quiet and calm, drifting sideways at his instruction with nothing more than a small smile, and a tip of his head. Compared to Natasha ... in fact, compared to all the rest of them, Clint was actually pretty restful.

And compared to _this_ customer … No. Actually, no. Loki was damned dangerous. But he wasn’t nearly so bad for Tony’s digestion and/or liver as the rest of them.

“Anthony,” the man smiled, drifting up to the bar, resting pale hands lightly on the countertop. He always called Tony that. Mostly because he was a _bastard_. “The usual, if you would?”

Tony flashed him the usual grin, dark and casual, feeling his hands automatically steady themselves, settling into the quiet hum of adrenalin, as they moved to glasses, and bottles, and ice. Easy, steady, calm. Unmoved by the thing in the back of his head, that had started stirring as soon as Steve had walked in, and all but gibbering when this one followed him. _Danger_ , it whispered. _Danger_.

_No_. Imagine that.

“Slow night?” Loki asked, leaning back against the bar to survey the room, cold green eyes sweeping the small crowd with practiced, cynical movements. There was no fervour, in Loki. Not anymore. Thor said there had been, when they’d first split, when Loki’d first turned towards the Nasjonal Samling. Apparently, he’d been nothing _but_ fire and fervour, then.

Not anymore. But then, the years did that to a lot of people. Tony knew that better than anyone.

“Worry in the air,” Tony explained, pouring the apple brandy. Loki had a taste for it. And Calvados wasn’t the easiest thing to come by. Though not the hardest, either. “People heard a storm’s coming to town, are keeping their heads down.”

Loki shot a glance his way, dark and sly and amused. “Mmm,” he noted. Agreement, mockery, Tony couldn’t tell. Could be either, could be both. “I had heard that forecast, too.”

Tony grinned at him, quick and edged. “Not the kind of storm to bother you, huh?” he asked, light enough, but something hard under it. Something really, really unwise, but the kind of unwise Tony’d never been able to resist. Especially not when there was a shake so very pointedly _not_ in his hands.

Loki turned to him. Smiling faintly, darkly, savagely. “Oh, you’d be surprised,” he murmured, light and easy, and Tony … frowned. Felt himself frown. Because there _wasn’t_ a hardness under that. A darkness, yes, but not a hardness. 

Before he could parse it, though, Loki snapped out a pale hand (and how they managed to _stay_ that pale, no-one knew, but baths in milk and/or the blood of virgins hadn’t been ruled out). Not to the glass, now poured, but past it. Loki snapped a hand around Tony’s wrist, and he’d shot stiff and cold before he could parse anything at all.

“I always meant to ask, about these,” Loki mused softly, lips pursed thoughtfully as he pushed Tony’s sleeve up, carefully. Gently, even, but Tony _really_ didn’t care right then. Tracing slender fingers over the knotted scars that circled Tony’s wrist.

Tony stayed still. Rigidly so. Not wholly by choice, either. “A small misadventure,” he said, and his voice wasn’t near steady enough, wasn’t near casual enough, but it was _close_. Damn him, it was fucking close. “Years ago, now.”

Loki looked up. Looked away from the scars on Tony’s wrist, and met Tony’s eyes instead, and … there was something. Something. “In Europe?” the man asked, low and smirking, as though that was a question _anyone_ would answer honestly, in this time, in this place. With a small smile, like he knew there was no possible way Tony would tell him the truth.

And that. And just because. In that instant, Tony decided. He hadn’t told anyone, hadn’t even told Bruce, but then, Bruce had never dared him. Bruce had never looked him in the eyes, cold and green, and _dared_ him.

“Abyssinia, actually,” Tony said, harsh and quiet. “A little misadventure. Like I said. But … it _started_ in America.” He smiled, black and glittering, a twist of old pain rising up. This whole evening. This entire fucking evening. “Turns out you don’t really need a war, to have a misadventure. You just need a man you loved like a second father, who decides he wants more than you’ve been giving him.”

Loki … flickered. Tony had no better word for it. Something rolled through the man, rolled through the neat, put-together man of business in his dapper little suit. A flash of … something. Dark and icy, a howling void, like the thing that flashed upwards in Bruce, sometimes. Like the thing that, maybe, flashed in Tony sometimes, too.

“Yes,” Loki agreed, distantly, and gently laid Tony’s wrist back on the bar, settling it almost precisely, before darting instead to the tumbler. With the kind of hard desperation Tony _recognised_. “Always worse, aren’t they? Betrayals from those you loved.”

Tony blinked at him, a little. Resisting the urge to tuck his wrist to his chest, to rub his hand over it. Phantom memories. Ghosts, around his wrist, and in green eyes.

“But then,” Loki smiled. Hard again, light again, raising his glass in deliberately disaffected salute. “That’s what this is for, right?” He grinned, and gestured out over the crowd, over the _Cafe Bercilak_. “People come to Banner’s to drown their sorrows, and forget their sins, do they not?”

And Tony was having a hard night. He was having a bad night, and his hands were _not_ shaking, no, but there’d been a faint tremble, since Loki touched his wrist, and that was why. He told himself that was why.

“Some sins you can’t forget,” he said, softly, and watched Loki stiffen, watched green eyes flash, fury over a hard edge of pain. “There’s no bottle in the world deep enough, to drown some sins.”

Loki looked at him. The quisling, dark and furious, the Gestapo, or as fucking good as. Thor’s exhausted little brother, who had the whole city stepping lightly around him, who had a world of sin to drown, and never, ever enough drink.

“Everyone gets to try, though,” Tony finished, quietly. Tipping a little more into Loki’s glass, with a little thing that wasn’t _quite_ a smile. “We all get to try.”

Loki blinked at him. The lines at the corners of his eyes crinkling thoughtfully as he frowned, as he looked at Tony. “And how much did it take you?” he asked, very quietly. “How deep was your bottle, Anthony?”

Tony smiled, a dark and bleeding grin. “I let you know when I reach it,” he said, and for the first time since he’d known the man … the smile at the corner of Loki’s mouth looked almost real.

And then, because it was _that kind of night_ , the door opened, staying open for a long pause, long enough for the swell of silence to spread around it, and then … Then Commandant Johann bloody Schmidt himself walked in. Because _naturally_.

Forget the bottle, Tony thought, as he felt Loki grow still beside him, as he felt the seeded tremble disappear from his own hands. _Forget_ the bottle. 

If any of them survived this night, he was crawling inside a fucking _distillery_.


	2. Interrogation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Tony falls afoul of Schmidt, and Loki, somewhat shockingly, interferes.

Conversations started back up as Schmidt entered the main bar. Slowly. And with a vaguely frantic edge. To be fair, Tony didn’t exactly blame anyone there.

For his own part, he fixed back on his casual, welcoming smile, finding a glass to polish to keep his hands busy - and steady - as he watched the man approach, followed by what had to be a couple of his own people. Vaguely conscious, as he did so, of Loki turning sideways in his seat to lounge with most of his back to the bar, and his languid attention fixed between Tony and the Commandant. Tony … tried not to worry, about that.

“Evening, sir,” he smiled, as Schmidt drew level, spreading his hands to encompass the bar. “Can we help you?”

Schmidt twisted one lip, faintly. Something that Tony had the nagging impression was meant to be a smile. “Yes, I think you can.” He sat, slowly and pointedly, at the bar, ignoring Loki’s borderline-invasive stare beside him. “I’m here to look for someone. Perhaps you have seen him?”

Tony affected a shrug. Carefully not swallowing, not stiffening, not showing the creeping flinch that had started its slow, icy way up his spine. “Could be. We see a lot of people, in this place.”

Schmidt did smile, this time. Tony wished he hadn’t. “So I’ve heard,” he murmured, low and suggestive. “And I have only been in the city a few hours. It seems all of Casablanca knows the _Cafe Bercilak_.”

Tony faked a proud smile. “Yes sir,” he nodded, tipping his head proprietarily. “Everyone comes to us sooner or later.” And yes, he was aware he was digging a hole it was going to be hard getting out of, he could see the eyebrow Loki was surreptitiously raising, but frankly, he didn’t see as he had much _choice_. “Did you come here for business, sir?”

Schmidt leaned in. “I came here for a man,” he said, softly, and with that dark edge of passion that stabbed at Tony’s gut. “A man I have been searching for for some time. And I would like, very much, if you could help me find him. His name … is Captain Steven Rogers.”

Fuck. _Fuck_. He was going to kill Rogers. He was going to _kill_ him.

If no-one killed him first.

“Sorry,” he smiled, and it wasn’t queasy, he’d could fake a smile like you wouldn’t _believe_ , he could look casual before a fucking firing squad. And almost had, once. “Names … Well. They don’t mean so much, in Casablanca. You got a description, maybe?”

Blond, blue-eyed, Aryan dreamboat, except for the fact he was American, soldier through to his bones, shadow of Tony’s past, pain in the neck … sitting not twenty yards away, with only a few walls to keep him out of sight. Sure. You got a description, friend? 

They were dead. They were _so_ , so dead. Though technically, Schmidt couldn’t touch them, not on French soil, _unoccupied_ French soil … Tony didn’t figure Schmidt looked like a man to care.

“Indeed,” Schmidt smiled. Colder, now, threatening. Loki, very faintly, shifted. A gentle, ready stillness. “You would know this man, I think. Blond. Blue-eyed. A certain … heroic figure. He would be quite noticable, I think.”

Yeah. You don’t say. “Hmm,” Tony murmured, trying not to think of how badly this was going to go, focusing on the fact that so long as nobody said anything, there was still … hope, sort of, for this endless disaster of an evening. “Yeah, I’d have noticed him, alright. And I might have seen him recently. But … I don’t think he’s been through tonight.”

He _shouldn’t_ have been, the stupid noble bastard, because only a goddamned _idiot_ would have been abroad with the Commandant fresh in town, but _no_ , no, Captain bloody Rogers had to _warn_ people, and now look where they were. As soon as Tony got rid of Schmidt, and Loki, and the whole fucking bar of witnesses, he was going to _murder_ the good Captain. Thoroughly.

“Really,” Schmidt said, looking right at Tony, and that tone … That tone snapped Tony right out of his thoughts. That tone shot like a bullet straight through Tony’s gut, and locked the ice solid in his spine. “Really,” Schmidt repeated, mildly amused, as he rose in his seat. “That’s interesting. Because when I arrived, the local police, having received my advance description, informed me that a man of such looks was seen entering the Cafe not so long ago. And since they have been guarding every exit for the past two hours, it seems to me this man could not have left just yet. So.” 

He smiled, grim and terrible, into Tony’s widening eyes, resting his hands heavily on the bar while Tony let his fall still and shaking. 

“So,” Schmidt whispered, almost gently. “Perhaps you have suddenly remembered something, yes? Perhaps you have suddenly seen … more than you thought you had, hmm?”

Tony … said nothing. Not for a long second. He said nothing, staring up into the mad light in the Schmidt’s eyes, resting his trembling hands on the bar. The light he recognised. The light he knew, so well.

He knew what he should do. He knew what sanity said was the only _possible_ thing he could do. He didn’t owe Rogers a damn thing. He and Bruce had agreed to a policy of self-preservatory neutrality years ago, and he owed it to his friend not to break that. Not to take risks for both of them, without asking. And if Schmidt was right, if Rogers had been seen enter, and the exits were blocked, then Rogers was lost regardless. And his whole cadre with him. And this was Vichy soil, still. This was not occupied territory, and there were limits to what Schmidt should be able to do, and even if Tony sold them out right now, they should be … they should be fine. They were dangerous, and capable, and they had the law on their side. More or less. Sort of.

But …

Tony knew the light. In Schmidt’s eyes. He knew it. Remembered it, with that faint, creeping urge to tuck his wrists to his chest, to bring the scars of binding up, and arrange them defensively over the near-fatal starburst on his chest. Tony _remembered_ that light. Remembered what it meant. And knew, law or not, unoccupied or not, if Schmidt took them now … they were dead. At the very _best_ , they were dead.

And the Captain’s eyes had just, for the first time in more than a month, warmed in Tony’s direction. Tonight had been the first night Rogers had looked at him with anything but disdain.

Tony closed his eyes. Dipped his head, addressed himself to the bar. To avoid the flare he knew would appear in Schmidt’s eyes, the predatory flash. “I’m sorry, sir,” he said, quietly. Knowing. Fuck. Knowing, how this was going to end. “I haven’t seen anyone matching that description. Not tonight. I don’t know how he …”

He cut off with a snap, as Schmidt’s closed fist impacted brutally with his cheek. Tony heard himself suck in a stunned breath, felt himself stagger back, clutching at the bar. Almost falling, hearing a glass skitter back from his clutching hand. The pain, when it arrived, was almost distant, by comparison.

“Look at me,” Schmidt snarled, low and furious. “ _Look_ at me.”

Tony swallowed. Tony breathed, once, long and careful, clenching his hand into a tight, terrified fist. He swallowed. And then, he raised his head, fixing a shocked, apologetic look on his face. From the corner of his eye, he caught something flicker, in Loki, but his attention was for Schmidt. For the familiar, horribly familiar, look there.

“What do you think will result from this?” the man asked him, almost curiously. “If he is here, he will be found. When it is found that you have lied to me, what do you think will happen, hmm?”

Tony swallowed, shook his head. Well. If he was going to be stupid … “I’m sorry. Perhaps I just missed him, sir. We’ve been busy tonight. But I haven’t seen this man.”

He saw it, this time. He saw the darkness in Schmidt’s eyes congeal into cruelty, saw the fist come up. He saw it coming, braced himself. Not that it would do him much good. He saw the blow coming.

Except it didn’t.

Tony stared, in some shock, at the pale hand that locked itself around Schmidt’s wrist, arresting the strike before it hit. Tony stared, in pretty open disbelief, at Loki’s small moue of distaste, uncaring in the face of the raw fury as Schmidt turned on him, and a number of pistols were cocked behind them.

“Now, now,” Loki murmured, light and immaculate in his casual attire. “Really, sir. This is not German soil. Some pretense at civility, please.”

Schmidt turned on him, his snarl turning ugly rapidly. “How _dare_ you …” he murmured, soft and vicious and, Tony thought, just the smallest bit disbelieving himself.

Loki smiled, a gleam like a razor. “I understand your concerns, Commandant, I do,” he continued, casual and airy as though there was no thought of violence around him. “I sympathise. But this _is_ as yet unoccupied territory. The natives might get … a little restless, perhaps?” He nodded sideways, into the silent, grim crowd that surrounded them. These people, so many of whom had seen brutality. In Casablanca. And with the police not yet inside.

Schmidt, looking around him, cooled somewhat. He didn’t back down. He was too powerful, and too supported, to back down. But he calmed. Put back on the requested pretense of civility.

“And who are you?” he asked, clipped and cold. “To interfere?”

Loki shrugged, light and easy, releasing the man’s arm to turn back to the bar, lifting his drink once again. Catching Tony’s eyes, for a beat, a half-second. Flicking a glance over the blooming bruise on Tony’s cheek, the swelling of his lip. And Tony … couldn’t quite parse the flicker in his expression, at the sight of it.

“Laufeysson,” he answered, quietly. “Loki.”

Several expressions flickered rapidly over Schmidt’s face, at that. Several emotions, few of them good, and in the end, he settled on … satisfaction. A rather dark, disdainful satisfaction. “Liesmith,” he said, almost approvingly. “The quisling.”

Loki flashed a smirk, nearly disguising the edge of pain in it, almost obscuring the taint of irony. To Tony, at least, not quite succeeding. Huh. “Even so,” he smiled, raising his glass in salute. “So you see. I really do sympathise, Herr Schmidt.”

Schmidt’s lips curled, somewhere between smile and sneer. “I’m sure,” he murmured, shifting forward slightly into Loki’s space. Ignoring, for the moment, Tony. “And what are you doing here, Herr Liesmith. You are … far from home.”

Loki laughed, waving a hand dismissively. “I am looking for someone, of course,” he smiled, cavalier. “Much like yourself.” A small darkening, a small edge. “Indeed, quite like yourself. Almost down to the description. Isn’t that interesting?”

Schmidt stilled. A hunter coming on point, a predator sensing a threat. Tony felt his gut turn over, felt fear ebb and surge desperately, coiled in his stomach. Dead. Every last one of them. They were all dead.

“Rogers?” Schmidt asked, and there was something strange in it, almost a threat, towards _Loki_ , for no reason Tony could see. Possessiveness? Was there a _competition_ , now, for who got to bring the Germans Rogers’ head?

“Close, but no,” Loki demurred, narrowing his eyes in turn. Seeing what Tony had seen. Seeing no more reason for it. Well. That was … interesting. Or would be, if Tony wasn’t shortly going to die. “Merely someone who bears him some resemblance. A Norwegian.” He offered a small smile, a lightening of his eyes. “Perhaps we can be of assistance, to each other. I have been in Casablanca for some time.”

If Loki had been trying to distract him, he failed, at that. Not that Loki _would_ , Tony didn’t even know why he’d thought that, but regardless. If Loki had been trying, he failed as soon as he said that. Schmidt, interest cooling back into anger and ugly cruelty, turned back to Tony. “That will not be necessary,” he said, coldly, his hand snapping out to seize Tony’s arm. “I think I have all the help I need, is that not so?”

Tony smiled at him, desperately. He couldn’t think of a damn thing else to do. He leaned over the brutal twisting of his arm, and grinned up into the mad light in Schmidt’s eyes.

“Yes,” Loki said, almost quickly, his fingers flickering lightly over the man’s sleeve. “About that, actually.” He smiled, thin and casual, as both of them turned to stare at him. Tony … hadn’t the first clue what the man thought he was doing. “I’ve been here for some time, you see. And I’ve been rather monopolising Anthony here’s time. I’m afraid it’s very possible that he _hasn’t_ seen your quarry. And it may well have been my fault.”

Tony didn’t gape at him in shock. He had enough survival instinct to realise that that would be a _very_ bad plan. But it was a near fucking thing. What the _hell_?

Schmidt, though, only raised a cool, disbelieving eyebrow. “You think so?” he asked, a casual twist of his grip almost curling Tony sideways onto the bar, struggling not to gasp. “You think he is not simply lying?” He spread his lips again, that thing that _wasn’t_ a smile, no matter how much it tried to look like one. “I recognise his type. Don’t you? That terrified, defiant look, in his eyes …”

He smiled down at Tony, who glared up at him, eyes watering. Knowing, knowing he should look away, knowing he should look cowed, _knowing_ he wasn’t helping himself. But he remembered this. He remembered that look, in the eyes of men standing over him.

He remembered the man who had died because of it.

“Yes,” Loki said, and it was a hushed murmur, almost respectful, in a strange way. “I recognise it. But I think, Herr Schmidt, that it has little to do with us, or your prey. I don’t think it has much to do with Casablanca at all.”

Tony felt his breath hitch. Staring up into those green eyes, and the tired thing there. He felt his breath hitch, and shook his head. Don’t. Don’t you _dare_. You bastard, don’t you dare.

Loki, with a faint, ironic little smile, ignored the silent plea, and reached delicately across Schmidt’s arm to touch at Tony’s sleeve, and draw it carefully back from his wrist. “You see,” he said, very softly. “I don’t believe it is you he defies at all, Herr Schmidt. I think it is his memory.”

Tony looked up. Looked into Schmidt’s eyes, as the Commandant took in the knotted scars, the twisted marks of ropes, dug into his wrist. They’d drug him a long way, before they considered themselves safe. Dragged him, mostly dead, such a long way. He looked up into Schmidt’s eyes, as the man took them in. He saw the appreciative light that flared there.

He struggled, desperately, not to throw up. He struggled not to be sick, in memory, in the face of it.

“He hasn’t seen anything, I think,” Loki continued. Lightly. Persuasively, patting Tony’s sleeve back into place, brushing Schmidt’s arm as though in summons as he drew his hand back. “Anthony has been a good friend to me, these past few weeks. An excellent confidante, I assure you. He simply has some small peccadillos. Results of an old misadventure. But he would not … discommode us, not purposefully. He knows better.”

And Tony distantly recognised the implications in that, distantly recognised what Loki was implying, and how many people were listening to him imply it, how many people were going to feel betrayed by it, but he couldn’t quite focus on that. He couldn’t focus on any of that, because he was looking right at Loki, looking right in those calm, green eyes, and there was something … desperate, there, that Tony just couldn’t understand. Bowed under Schmidt’s hard grip, he just had no idea what to think.

When the hell had _Loki_ decided to give a good goddamn about Tony? And how much was that goddamn going to _cost_?

“If you say so,” Schmidt said, face still twisted in that sneer, in that hungry, appreciative mask. He let go of Tony’s arm, casting it aside almost contemptuously. “Then we’ll search the place. _Achtung_!”

The two men who’d followed him in leapt to attention, ready to move. How they expected to turn over the place on their own, Tony wasn’t quite sure, but he figured they’d probably manage. He … stiffened. He had to. Groping under the bar, since he was already curled down there, for one of his and Bruce’s little surprises. Because Loki might just have saved him, Loki might have given him a window to breathe, but if Schmidt found the others … well, Tony hadn’t actually had to pretend not to have seen them in the first place, had he? He … He hadn’t had to, except for how he _had_ , and it was going to be spitting on Loki’s generosity, but that hadn’t actually changed, in the past few minutes.

Schmidt had reminded him, viscerally, of why defying him was a bad idea. Schmidt had reminded him, so very powerfully, of what it felt like, to be under someone’s thumb. Schmidt had reminded him of what, exactly, Abyssinia had been like.

And that was a bad, bad plan. Because Tony mightn’t have a chance in hell of helping them, of getting out of this, of doing a damn thing, when Schmidt apparently had them surrounded, but then ... he hadn’t a hope then, either. Tony hadn’t had a chance in hell of escaping, in Abyssinia, hadn’t had a hope of taking his captors out. And look how _that_ had turned out.

He still didn’t owe Rogers. He didn’t owe any of them a damn thing. But that didn’t matter, anymore. It wasn’t them he was thinking of. It was _Schmidt_. Schmidt, and the pulsing, throbbing desire to really, _really_ ruin his day.

Loki must have seen something, in Tony. Loki must have caught something, in the way he moved, in the savage flash of his eyes. Loki must have seen something, because Loki moved, then. Flashed Tony a fierce, desperate warning, and moved to block Schmidt. Moving lightly and easily, almost languidly, for all the urgency only Tony really saw.

“You know, that might not be necessary, Herr Schmidt.” He flashed that slick, dark little smile of his, the one Tony was maybe beginning to hate, just a little. “Not to mention that it would be … somewhat impolitic. As I said. I have been in Casablanca for some time. Perhaps I can … ease your path, a little?”

Schmidt turned to look at him. Black, impatient. No longer indulging, no matter what kind of reputation Loki must have had, with him. Schmidt looked at him, hard and ugly and cold. “If you can be of assistance, Herr Laufeysson,” he said, quietly. “Perhaps you might like to _hurry_.”

Loki smiled. Edged and glittering and, Tony thought, with a flash of temper of his own. “Of course,” he murmured, and Tony hoped Schmidt couldn’t hear the poison in it as surely as he could, or Loki was going to be nursing a bruise of his own, in a minute. More to the point, Schmidt would stop _listening_ , in a minute. “Anthony hasn’t seen anything. But perhaps his employer has …?”

Oh, fuck. _No_. Tony needed to stop letting Loki have his head. The man didn’t lead them anywhere good.

“His employer?” Schmidt asked, and hey, interested again. Lucky them. Shit. 

Loki sketched a small bow, inclining his head with that small smile. “Mr Banner,” he explained, razored and light. “The _Cafe Bercilak_ is his. Anthony here is his best barman. They usually operate together. One in front, one in back. If Banner saw that I had occupied Anthony, he may have taken over some small duties, and thus been in a position to see your, ah. Your quarry.”

Schmidt quirked an eyebrow, at that. Looking pointedly back at Tony, who hurriedly slipped the gun back under the bar. In reach, but not in his hand, because he still recognised that look. He still knew what it meant.

“And will this Herr Banner be any more … cooperative, that Anthony?” Schmidt asked, softly, moving back to the bar before either Tony or Loki could move, snapping out to grip Tony’s neck, and drag him forward slightly over the bar. “I ask, because I find my patience beginning to fray.” He leaned close, looked into the terror Tony knew was lurking in his eyes, the terror he didn’t bother trying to hide. This kind of man, it was best to show it. It made them … complacent. “I find myself not enamoured, of this Cafe.”

Loki’s smile turned a little queasy, for a second. Half a second, and only when Schmidt’s eyes were turned away, before firming back up with casual confidence, and no hint of how, for that second, his eyes had been fixed on the hand on Tony’s neck.

“If one knows how to ask,” he demurred, instead. Airy and confident, and Tony was beginning to think Loki might be as decent at false confidence as Tony himself, and have _earned_ the epithet ‘liesmith’ besides. 

And then Tony couldn’t think, yet again, then he was lost to the slick chill spearing up his spine once more, because the next words out of Loki’s mouth were … about the worst possible ones, under the circumstances.

“I think I saw him go to the kitchen,” Loki said, while Tony desperately, _desperately_ , did not flinch. “Why don’t I go and … acquire his assistance, hmm?”

The kitchen. Of course, the fucking kitchen. Where Rogers’ _entire bloody crew_ were sitting pretty. Where Tony himself had put them. All this, all of this, and Tony was pinned here by the resident madman, while Loki, who hated Thor with a bright passion, even still, wandered over, looking for Bruce. Of course, of _course_ , Loki had seen Bruce enter the kitchen.

“Why don’t you,” Schmidt agreed, sneering blackly out over the bar, over the crowd, and for the first time in some years, Tony felt something close to despair. For the first time since dragging himself back from Abyssinia, he felt that black, dark ball in his gut.

Loki, smiling lightly, caught his eyes. Loki, the quisling, the gestapo, the enemy. Loki, who’d stuck his neck out, for some unfathomable reason, for Tony. Loki caught his eyes, in turning, and smiled. Soft and black.

And Tony felt ice stab jagged shards into his spine.


End file.
